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43 Audiogurus Points

Audiogurus Knowledge Base

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Wiring for Whole House Distributed Audio

I've got a brother-in-law who's building a house. He was asking me about many different things having to do with wiring up the home, but
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What Kind of Surround Speakers Do I Need?

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Description

Details

Every installation technician has faced it or soon will - the dreaded hum bars on the screen, a telltale sign of a ground loop. Ground loops are caused by voltage potential differences at the ground point on your equipment. Voltages in the range of microvolts up to millivolts or higher can cause ground loops. Ground loops occur when multiple audio/video components are powered from different outlets, most commonly, outlets that are tied to different circuitbreakers or even a different secondary from the power transformer. Ground loops manifest themselves in the form of hum bars called herringbone (diagonal lines on the screen) and AC beat (a wide, barely visible bar that rolls from the bottom to the top of the screen). Often you can hear the ground loop as the noise on the video encroaches on the audio signal. Our isolation transformer easily connects into your audio/video system and breaks the ground path through cables between components. Start at the component last installed before the ground loop was discovered, and connect the isolation transformer at different ends of the audio/video cable until the ground loop is gone.Please Note: While this transformer is designed to eliminate ground loops, isolating the source of the ground loop can be very difficult even for professional technicians. Sometimes the problem can be at the last added component or at the furthest from the main system; however, these might only be symptoms of a harder-to-solve problem. Please exercise patience as you work through test scenarios to eliminate your ground loop issue.